


Yesterday ~ Today ~ Tomorrow

by baranduin



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baranduin/pseuds/baranduin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time there was a princess .<br/>My recipient asked for post season 1 but pre season 2. This is kind of that :-)<br/>The "Tomorrow" sections contains quotes from Season 1's last episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday ~ Today ~ Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for vanitashaze

 

 

**Yesterday**

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a warm, watery land that was surrounded on three sides by many dangerous, slithery creatures, both the animal kind and the human kind. The human kind was by far the most dangerous, though it would be many years before the princess learned that particular lesson. It was a good thing that the princess was protected by her brave father or things might have gone ill with her sooner. 

The princess lived in an airy castle with her brave father and her beautiful mother, and they saw to all of her wants and desires except for one.

"Where is my brother?" the princess asked plaintively each night when her mother tucked her in and sang a soft lullaby of the winding waterways of their country. 

"Are we not enough for you, my darling?" the mother always asked. "Do we not keep you safe and happy?"

That tended to make the princess stop and think for a moment, at least long enough for the warm breeze curling through the louvered windows of her bedroom and the sweet tones of her mother's voice to cause the princess' eyelids to grow heavy with sleep.

But not so heavy that, as her mother stole silently from the bedroom, the princess did not whisper, "My brave father will bring me my heart's desire. I know it."

Her mother's response was always spoken so quietly that the princess was never quite sure of the words. She usually convinced herself that her mother had not even spoken, and surely not the words that formed in the princess' mind the split second between waking and sleeping. 

_"Be careful what you wish for."_

***

One afternoon the princess was dancing in front of her castle, singing for a brother.

_"Send me a brother, a brother, a brother ... send me a brother ... oh do."_

The day was hot and muggy. Enormous clouds roiled miles above her head and grumbled to her of rain to come. The louder the rumbles grew, the harder and faster the princess danced, whirling round and round until she fell on the ground, laughing with delight. So it was that she was caught off guard when her father's car rolled into the driveway and he stepped out. 

She ran to him and he put his arms around her. "I've brought someone for you to meet," he said and opened the passenger door. There the princess saw a wild fawn crouching on the front seat. It bared its teeth and resolved into a grubby little boy with eyes so big that no wonder the princess thought it was a fawn. It trembled until the princess' brave father held out his arms and soothed it.

It wasn't her birthday and it wasn't Christmas or any of the other obscure holidays her father made up just to have a reason to buy his darling princess a present. So she pinched herself and then shrieked with joy, just once, before her mother pulled her by her wrists and took her inside.

"But ... it's my brother!"

She did not know her mother's face, it was so changed from its normal placid lines. 

"Stay away!" Then her mother locked her in her room, leaving her to listen to the rain as it crashed onto the roof with the fury of a thousand storms. You would have thought she would have been as furious as the rain, but she was not. She exulted in the storm and her heart beat in time with it:

_"Here is my brother, my brother, my brother ... here is my brother ..."_

***

In the past it had always been the three of them--the princess and her brave father and beautiful mother. Four turned out to be an untenable, awkward sort of number, but it was only a few years until they were three again. The princess placed a fading rose in her dead mother's hand, then kissed her farewell with a sort of relieved regret in her heart.

That evening, while their inconsolable father was besieged by kind-hearted, thick-skulled callers, the princess and her brother slipped outside and sat beneath their favorite tree. As usual, her brother did not speak but sat coiled up inside himself, tense and alert.

The princess said, looking nervously toward the house, as though someone might overhear her soft words, "Now she can't try to separate us."

He nodded after a while, just once. The princess watched him carefully, as usual trying to fathom the darkness in his eyes.

***

Though it aggravated her some, the princess did not usually mind the secret bond that grew between her father and her brother. This bond seemed to say, "We are protecting you. We are keeping you safe. Don't worry." 

So even though it hurt her to be excluded from their brave deeds (even as she uncovered the shallow graves of innocent creatures), she knew there was some rhyme and reason to it. 

_He is my brother, my brother, my brother ... he means me no harm ..._

Her surety disappeared when her father died and the princess blossomed into Deb the Foul Mouthed who prowled the streets outside the castle, in search of something, some sort of connection with her father and, even more importantly, the old closeness with her brother, who became sunnier and sunnier on the outside and yet closed up tight as a drum inside. 

***

**Today**

"Fucking douchebag. I'll put his sorry ass away."

Deb was happy. Gloriously happy, exulting passionately in her chosen element. The only thing that could make her happier would be to have a detective's badge on her chest. And that would come in time, no matter what pathetic things LaGuerta tried to do to keep it from her. She was sure of it, as sure as she was that her blouse would be sticking to her back five minutes after she left her apartment each morning.

"I don't know how you can do this." Rita shook her head and took a ladylike sip of beer. "Just the thought gives me the willies." 

Deb leaned back against the fake leather banquette. It was cool through her thin shirt, the bar's freezer like air-conditioning a welcome relief from outside. She spread her arms wide and preened. She knew she was preening and she did not give a fuck. Deb was on top of the world.

"Life's not a fairy tale, Rita."

Rita winced. "I know that."

"Fuck. I'm sorry." Deb squeezed Rita's hand. "But I was born to do this. Just like Dexter was born to fuck around with blood. And you'll see. I'm so going to nail this fucker to the wall."

Deb smiled at Rita. Rita would never understand how truly fitted she was to this life. But Harry'd trained her well. Trained her to face reality. She snorted. Not that Harry realized it. He'd been too busy training Dexter to act like a human being to really notice Deb. But Deb had noticed. She had noticed everything. She still did.

She slapped a $20 on the table and slid away. "Gotta go. Gotta meet Rudy." She smirked that crooked smirk, the one that always got to Rudy, the one that usually ended up with her lying flat on her back with Rudy crouched over her. Oh that was the best.

"Be careful," Rita said, smiling but with worried eyes.

***

**Tomorrow**

The princess was motionless, curled up on the couch. She had been that way ever since her brave brother had left the small castle where they both now lived. This place was not nearly as large as the one in which they'd grown up together under the loving eye of their brave father, but it felt the same to the princess. There was a quality to it that spoke of safety and being loved.

_Does it have to be Deb?_

It's the only way. 

She shook her head back and forth, quite like a puppy that has a burr stuck between his eyes and can't get rid of it but perseveres until he dizzies himself.

Perseveres. That was it. Princesses were known for their perseverance and she would be no different. All she had to do was be patient and wait for her brother to come home as he always did. She would pay no attention to the voice that whispered words at her, words that confused her and made her hands shake with the fear she thought had been vanquished along with the thin ogre who had enchanted her.

_Harry teach you that?_

He taught me a code. To survive. 

Oh yes, their brave father had taught them many things. She hated the insidious voice, but for some reason it spoke the occasional truth amid the lies, those terrible lies that had the power to destroy her trust in her brother. If she listened to the lies. Which she would not. No, she would not; she would continue her quiet vigil, her hands motionless in her lap, until her brave brother returned.

_You can be yourself around me. Who am I?_

A killer. Without reason or regret. Free.

You can be that way too.

But the code ...

"No!" The princess was on the floor now, huddled into a little ball, breathing hard. It hadn't happened that way. She'd dreamed it; she hadn't heard such things, had she? She couldn't have. Her mind was playing tricks on her again, just as it had when she had been trapped in the ogre's dungeon, his sweet potion muddling her mind and freezing her limbs.

But she could not get the words out of her mind; they chanted at her in a twisted version of the verses she used to sing to herself back in the perfect days of her childhood once her brother had arrived to complete her life.

_You can be that way too ... that way too ... that way too ..._

It was so easy to let it happen. The rhythm was so seductive that the princess eventually got up and made her way to the treadmill. 

_... that way too ... that way too ... you can be that way too ..._

She did not know how much time passed, whether it was minutes or hours, but when the key turned in the lock, she was drenched in sweat and whispering the words out loud in time with the rhythm of her pounding feet.

"Deb? Let me in."

The princess held onto the treadmill's rails and stopped, the muscles of her legs quivering and her heart beating hard. He was home and she still had those awful words on her lips, expanding in her mind and heart. 

"Come on!" Her brother was rattling the chained door now, impatience and irritation in his voice.

She shook her head and something exploded in her chest, something warm and joyful from her heart.

_My brother ... my brother ... my brother keeps me safe ..._

With those potent words of power ringing in her head, soothing her fears, calming her, she ran to the door and unchained it. How could she ever have mistrusted her brother? Had she really thought that there had been some connection, some deeper thing between him and the ogre she'd loved? Surely that had been part of the enchantment laid over her. 

The princess opened the door and said, "You're home. I'm so glad." She looked up into her brave brother's eyes, his dark, unfathomable eyes whose truth only she could read.

_Now we are safe in the castle ... safe in the castle ... safe ..._

 


End file.
